Friday, 12 May 2023

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 12:00 and 14:00 Premium Whale tours and on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 and 13:00 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land. 

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 12:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00

COVID-19: Keep in mind that passengers and crew are asked to ensure their own hygiene and safety at all times. Washing hands thoroughly with soap and using a hand sanitiser is advised.  

Report from Eldey: We started our very icelandic day with a bit of rain but almost no wind. The more we went out into the bay the more swell we got, but it was a long swell so we were fine! All of a sudden a blow appeared not too far from us, it was a humpback whale very gracefully doing fluke dives. Also close by, we had 2 pods of white beaked dolphins playing with the humpback whale! We also saw another very happy humpback whale and we decided to head there. It started breaching and slapping the water with the pectoral fin! It did some roles and tail slapping, so all kinds of behaviour! Amazingly, the dolphins played with the whale but always respectfully. After more than an hour with these gentle giants the captain said the time was up and we had go back. On the way, we got to see another pod of white beaked dolphins just to say goodbye to a wonderful morning in the presence of very happy cetaceans!

- Pedro Teixeira

Report from Eldey: Beautiful day out at sea today, with lots of sun but some cloud coverage from time to time. We sailed out into the bay and admired the beautiful birds that fish in Faxaflói: northern fulmars, arctic terns, black-legged kittiwakes, common seagulls, herring gulls, razorbills and common guillemots were all feeding on the plentiful fish that today was quite far away from the shore. It took us quite a lot of time to find the first whale of the tour, a minke whale, which was travelling and spending quite a lot of time underwater, which meant that it was quite hard to follow. After that we had the luck to find many humpback whales, 6 in total during the tour. Most of these were focused on feeding, and they were coming to the surface only for s brief time to catch a quick breath. We got quite a nice sight of them anyways, but on the way back we had a pleasant surprise: a humpback whale popped out of nowhere, very close to our ship, and it started relaxing by "logging", which meant just floating on the surface close to us. Such a great last whale of the day!

- Francesco Golin

Atlantic puffin, arctic tern, northern fulmar, eider duck, northern gannet and black headed gull